Report: Some Corona Deaths Caused by Medical Malpractice

Some coronavirus patients on respirators passed away not because of their illness but rather due to grave negligence and significant failures made by an unskilled nursing staff, reported Yisrael Hayom. The deaths took place in a special corona ward at the Wolfson Medical Center in Cholon where the patients in critical condition were being treated. The shocking revelation was noted in a memo entitled “Lessons and Conclusions” of an internal audit of patient care, and was coordinated by Dr. Ari Soroksky, director of the ICU at the Wolfson Hospital.

Soroksky stressed that he wrote the letter because after calling a meeting to learn lessons from the care provided to coronavirus patients, no representatives from the institution’s office were present. The meeting was intended to refine, change and improve “future challenges for the upcoming winter.”

He warned that “in the near future, we will not be able to deal with a double outbreak of both the seasonal flu and corona.” He added that a wave of many patients needing respirators should be readied.

The coronavirus patients at Wolfson Hospital were cared for in a special ward established in the middle of March. There, doctors and nurses from the Internal Medicine department were accompanied by medical staff from the General Intensive Care Unit. Approximately 120 patients were treated in the ward. Roughly 30 of them required ventilation and 21 passed away.

But according to Soroksky, one of the serious issues with the care in the ward was that an “unskilled nursing staff cared for the severely ill and respiratory patients,” adding that “no intensive care would be successful without the combination of a qualified nursing staff in the ICU. Doctors depend on quality nurses, work hand in hand and one cannot succeed without the other.”

Soroksky lamented that during the first wave of coronavirus “we suffered greatly from a shortage of senior and experienced ICU nurses, and had to divide our time between the usual tasks of responding to the other hospital patients and the care for the corona patients.”

He said that the inability of the nursing staff in the corona ward at the hospital “caused failures in the ongoing care and supervision of patients,” adding that “in my 25 years of intensive care, I never encountered such errors, and the occurrence of such errors reveals extremely poor skill and professionalism.”

Soroksky highlights one incident where a coronavirus patient was recovering from the respirator and a nurse fed him incorrectly. The patient then choked to death when the food got stuck in his esophagus. Oddly, that patient’s cause of death was listed as coronavirus.